


we only have what we remember

by sapphicish



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Nightmares, Stream of Consciousness, Violence, charlotte is sad, linda is there briefly, nightmares? visions? dreams? memories? you decide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 19:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13887549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: Charlotte envies her; envies all of the people in the world who aren't Charlotte Richards.





	we only have what we remember

**Author's Note:**

> 1 pm thought/senseless writing spree after watching 3x16 and crying? you bet  
> violence and gun warnings apply; quick but detailed enough to be gross i mean mentions of _brain matter_ hello

She calls in for an early, previously unscheduled appointment with Linda for the first time when she wakes up with her hands tangled in her hair.

The nightmares run deeper than they have in the past. They run longer, too; she's smiling, and rotting, and dying, but the man – another person she's freed, another person who doesn't deserve it, another person who belongs in a cage – keeps shooting. He never reloads, his gun never runs out of bullets, and she's standing there, feeling the blood splatter warm across her face. The blood of her children. There is bone and brain dirtying her floors—clean white marble turned liquid red. She is drowning in it.

She cannot stop smiling. She feels the blood hit her teeth. When she closes her mouth, she feels it, tastes it. The blood of her children. He keeps shooting. Her hands slide up into her hair and pull. _WAKE UP, CHARLOTTE. WAKE. UP._

The blood of her children.

She wakes up, scalp stinging, knuckles burning from what a tight grip her hands have around locks of her hair – she pulls, pulls, pulls again because she needs to, wants to, deserves that pain, deserves worse.

But then she lets go, and realizes that she has pulled her hair out; strands fall around her fingers, blonde, falling into the sheets when she breathes out, letting them fall from her palms.

She stands on shaky legs, feeling numb, and dials Linda's number as she looks into the mirror in the bathroom. There are scratches down one side of her face; she presses her nails to them, angry and red, and does it again and again until she feels stable.

The blood of her children are on her nails, under her nails, in her teeth.

She sets her phone on speaker and listens to it ring as she douses a cotton pad in nail polish remover and cleans the red away. But it stains; it stays in the little cracks, the little spaces between nail and finger. She rubs and rubs and rubs.

She doesn't know how her voice emerges so calm when Linda picks up, but it does.

“Charlotte? Are you all right?”

 _No,_ she wants to say. _Help me. Please. The blood is everywhere._

“Yes,” she says. “I think I need an appointment. Today. This afternoon, if you aren't busy.”

When they hang up, she ducks into the shower and runs her fingers through her hair, trying not to pull. Yank. Hurt. Bleed.

When she closes her eyes, she sees the man – doesn't remember him, doesn't recognize his face beyond _this is one of the so-many people that I have helped escape the consequences of their horrible, monstrous crimes,_ and –

He points the gun and fires.

–

She trims her nails short, and paints them clear, and throws out the red nail polish.

–

“What happened?” Linda asks.

“What always happens,” Charlotte says, feeling dull, feeling dead. The blood of her children.

“You hurt yourself,” Linda says, blonde and gentle. She doesn't have children. She doesn't have nightmares about choking on their blood, about grinning madly, about watching them die –

She doesn't have that, doesn't have those things. Doesn't have anything.

Charlotte envies her; envies all of the people in the world who aren't Charlotte Richards.

Charlotte stares at the ceiling. She lies supine on the couch like she doesn't want to, but like she does anyway, hands folded over her abdomen. She doesn't know how she got here.

She doesn't know anything.

“I hurt everyone,” she says. “Even you.”

Linda doesn't flinch, but she blinks; Charlotte watches it, and it's too long, her eyes are closed for too long.

Charlotte looks away.

–

The blood of her children is wet in her hair. She looks in the mirror-in-her-dream, and her hair is red. Her face is red, and her teeth, and her nails.

There is a gun in her hands, and she shoots her children.

She wakes up and looks in the mirror-in-her-life and her hair is golden, and the sun is shining, and it is a new day and it feels not new at all.

Charlotte calls in sick.

–

“Charlotte,” Linda says.

“Linda,” Charlotte says.

“You fell asleep,” Linda points out, kind, smiling, patient – her hair is down, curled, and she's wearing a skirt Charlotte likes. “Do you feel better?”

“No. But I didn't dream.”

She didn't dream. The words feel odd. She always dreams; dreams of the place before, dreams of the hell and the blood and her children and the men and women she has let –

Go.

She falls asleep on Linda's couch and wakes up, not dreaming, and there is a box of tissues in her lap, but she isn't crying. She did cry. Before. She cried in great, huge, gulping sobs, cried until her head ached and her face burned. _I just want it to stop,_ she remembers saying.

 _It will,_ Linda said.

_When?_

_When you forgive yourself._

Charlotte doesn't say: _there's no forgiving yourself in Hell, and this is Hell, and I was in Hell, and now – is this Hell? Am I still there?_

She does say, sitting up, wiping her eyes, standing, staring at the table between them. “Thank you for your time.”

She goes home, and she lays down, and she sleeps again. It feels pointless; to wake up only to go home and go back to sleep, but she does it. Not intentionally, slumped against a gathering of pillows against her headboard watching Netflix and eating popcorn and feeling dull dull _dull,_ but she does it.

Over and over and over. _Wake up, Charlotte._ Fingers stick to her children's blood. _Wake – up – Charlotte._ Feet slip in the substance. _Wake up wake up wake UP._ There is something thicker than blood in her hair, a clump that she knows will be brain matter if she touches it. She doesn't touch it. She – smiles.

There is a gun in her hands. She shoots him. There is a gun in her hands. She shoots herself. There are no more bullets; so it's just her, sitting on the floor – _wake up Charlotte wakeup Charlotte wakeupcharlotte wakeUPCHARLOTTE_ – with a gun pressed to her temple, cold and metallic and cold and unfeeling and cold and dead. Click. Click. _CHARLOTTE._

She is standing in front of herself; she is sitting in front of herself. There is a woman across from her that looks identical to her. A perfect mirror image. She knows this woman; she is this woman, she has been this woman, she will be this woman again, or –

“Wake up, Charlotte,” the woman says, reaches towards the gun. “Wake up, my vessel.”

_WAKE UP CHARLOTTE WAKE—UP._

Charlotte sets the gun down and opens her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> haaaa ive never written anything like this before Can You Tell


End file.
